Breakthrough as British scientists grow mini organs in the laboratory
SCIENTISTS in the UK have grown ‘mini organs’ from human stem cells taken during the late stages of pregnancy for the first time, marking a ‘huge step forward’ for prenatal medicine.
Research from Great Ormond street Hospital and University college London shows that complex cell models, called organoids, can be grown and will retain biological information.
the advance means that
‘A step forward for medicine’
human development can be observed in late pregnancy for the first time, raising the possibility of monitoring and treating congenital conditions before birth.
Until now, organoids have been derived from adult stem cells or from the foetal tissue of terminated pregnancies and regulations restrict when samples can be obtained.
in the UK this can only be done up to 22 post-conception weeks. to overcome this, researchers extracted cells that had passed into the amniotic fluid, which surrounds the child in the womb. this meant the child was not touched during the collection process. Researchers took stem cells from the lungs, kidneys and intestine and used them to grow organoids that had the same functional features.
Dr Mattia Gerli, first author of the study, said the organoids ‘will allow us to study what is happening during development in both health and disease, which is something that hadn’t been possible before’.
the team worked with researchers in Belgium to study the development of babies with CDH, a condition where a hole in the diaphragm means organs like the intestine and liver get displaced into the chest.
Mini organs from babies with CDH both pre-and post-treatment were compared to organoids from healthy babies, providing an estimate of the treatment’s effectiveness.
Professor Paolo de coppi, senior author of the study published in the scientific journal nature Medicine, said: ‘this is the first time we’ve been able to assess a child’s congenital condition before birth. this is a huge step forward for prenatal medicine. When we meet families with a prenatal diagnosis, we’re often unable to tell them much about the outcome because each case is different.’
the research was a first step to offering a more detailed prognosis and, hopefully, more effective treatments, he added. the researchers say that while they have not yet studied the method in relation to other conditions, it is possible they could look at other issues that affect the lungs, like cystic fibrosis, kidneys and intestine.